Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho took one final swipe this season at rivals Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City during the club’s Player of the Year awards dinner.
Mourinho took to the stage at the plush Battersea Revolution venue and ripped into his critics for one last time before their Barclays Premier League title party wraps up.
The Chelsea boss feels he has taken stick from Louis van Gaal, Arsene Wenger and Manuel Pellegrini this season but threw it back with some ‘fictional’ chat on Tuesday night.
‘My players did not get the respect they deserved from day one to the last day,’ Mourinho said. ‘These are words that I really feel, but now I have a fiction story and let’s try to enjoy it.’
With a graphic on a large screen relating to Chelsea’s win over Manchester United last month, Mourinho added: ‘This is a game with two goals, but there is one team that like to play without the ball.
‘That team plays really well and the ball goes and goes and goes and the quality of the ball possession is good, but they don’t score. No points.
‘They asked the FIFA committee if they can win like this but they’re told it’s not possible. That the bigger possession is not essential to win matches and they are not champions.’
Mourinho, now in his element at the £240-a-ticket event, moved on to second-placed Manchester City, whose defensive record did not match Chelsea’s this season.
‘Then, there is another team. Only with one goal,’ he said. ‘And they score a lot of goals, from players in every position, and they score and they score and they score.
‘But they never concede a goal because there’s no goal. They speak to FIFA and they say they can’t be champions because there is only one goal.’
Finally, the Special One moved on to his most fierce rival across his six seasons and two spells at Stamford Bridge: Arsenal boss Wenger.
‘There is a third team, and the third team wants to play with two goals,’ he said.
‘They were scoring some, they were also conceding some. But they score really beautiful goals and then the bus comes along and they couldn’t do it.’
And the final words went to his champions: ‘And finally there is a team. They wanted to play with the normal rules and they know that in matches they have to score one more goal than the opponent.
‘How can you do this? By scoring lots of goals, by not conceding and scoring one.’